Eve was already seated in the cafeteria, absorbed in her phone despite the lack of internet severely limiting its functionality. She glanced up as Jove came over to sit across from her, her eyes taking him in with guarded scrutiny.
"Morning, little brother," she said.
"Morning, Eve." He braced himself for another round of emotional inquisition, but it never came, and he appreciated her for that. "Playing Vertimon?"
"Just about all my phone is good for these days," she said. "It's strange, though. I've only beaten two gym leaders so far."
"Yeah, I only just got past the first," said Jove. "It's challenging."
"Not just that. There's a lot of content in this game. Random events and surprises that even the good Pokemon games didn't really have."
"That's bad?"
"The opposite," she said. "Just didn't expect it."
"Can we establish a rule against talking about video games at the table?" suggested Aster.
"That feels like an oddly specific call out," said Eve.
"It's antisocial when not all of us can play it," said Aster.
"We have a couple of spare phones laying around now that you could install it on if you really wanted to," said Eve.
Spare phones. The words felt like a euphemism to Jove's ear. Two of the three "spare phones" were from men he'd killed. He wondered if there were more photos of the little blond boy on one of them, perhaps a whole gallery of the child.
He realized he'd started balling his hands into fists and forced himself to spread his fingers flat on the table. His mother brought out the food — blueberry waffles with instant coffee and orange juice from concentrate.
"I decided to let Andromeda splurge a bit," said Kira, with a shrug.
"I restricted myself to using only half the blueberries, as requested," said Andromeda. "I hope they taste delicious."
Having the AI back was something of a comfort. He'd actually been speaking to her fairly often across the past few days, more than he had his family. The fact that he knew he could say anything to her without it being cause for alarm made the act of unburdening himself feel natural, if ineffective.
He still felt that weight, all the emotions, even the buck of the pistol in his hand and the way it had deafened him in the moments after.
"Jove?" His mother prompted him, and he blinked, realizing she'd slid the butter tray his way to put some on his waffles.
"Thanks," he said.
He forced himself to chew and swallow, aware he hadn't been doing enough eating over the past few days. Silence held over the table, questioning and awkward.
They were safe, warm, and comfortable with the propane restored, but the reality of their situation had truly begun to set in. They were survivors now, a family unit that would have to grapple with whatever circumstances they found themselves in, with no certainty and no guarantees.
He hadn't been a part of removing the bodies of the two men he'd killed from the station. His mother hadn't let him do it, had insisted that she and Aster and Eve could handle the cleanup. He wanted to ask where they'd buried them outside but wasn't sure what he would do with the information.
"I think it might snow today," said Kira. "I hate to do it, but I think you might have to stay inside later this afternoon, Eve."
"I'll manage," said Eve.
She shifted, one hand rubbing her knee subtly under the table, but stopped after a second. Jove suspected it was still paining her. He was surprised she was still attempting to keep it secret from their mother, but it made a certain amount of sense.
His sister was stubborn to a fault, incapable of admitting when she was struggling or needed help. She'd just insist that she was fine and soldier on until landing herself in a situation where the injury caught up with her in the worst way.
He stabbed his fork down into the waffle and cut another piece.
"Jove?" said Aster. "I might need your help with something later today."
"Yeah, sure," he said. "What is it?"
"I want to rearrange my room a little bit," she said. "Maybe change the bed and bookshelf around. Everything's so heavy. I need your muscles to throw some weight around."
She smiled at him, seeming genuine enough. If there was an ulterior motive behind her request, she was hiding it well. But she was an actress and certainly capable of it.
They hadn't spent much time together since the night of the attack. They'd been fucking each other like horny rabbits right up until hearing that first gunshot. The memory of her naked body and moans was inexplicably tied to the violence that'd followed, the way all the rules had seemingly been tossed out the window.
"Are you sure you're okay?" asked Eve.
"Fine!" he snapped. "Yeah. I can help you, Aster. Whatever you need."
"Only if you're up to it," said Aster.
Jove sighed and let his fork clatter onto his plate. "I'm fine. Would you all stop treating me like an escaped mental hospital patient?"
Everyone went silent and stared at him, which doubled the sensation of being a spectacle. Jove pushed his plate back and stood up from the table.
"I'm going to work out," he said.
"Jove, hold on," said his mother.
"Come on, Jove," said Eve.
He left the cafeteria. The sterile grey hallways of Termina Station were vaguely ominous to him now, as though the base itself had been what'd forced him to pull the trigger.
He could at least recognize that he was in a funk. As much as he wanted his family to treat him normally again, it would first require him to start acting normal. He entered the gym and closed the door behind him, eyeing the workout equipment and taking his pick.
Once upon a time, Jove had looked down on treadmills. They'd seemed like a solution looking for a problem, a pitiful replacement for true running outdoors with the wind and sights and sounds of the world.
Over the past few days, he'd come to understand their appeal, respect them as a distinct and unique option rather than a weak imitation. Running on a treadmill was running through one's own thoughts rather than one's surroundings. Jove ran at a decent clip, mind racing over the same repeating moments, pulling the trigger, wrestling on the ground, fighting for his life.
He ran until he was out of breath and kept going until he almost felt dizzy. Finally taking a break, he wiped sweat off his face, satisfied by how far he pushed himself.
"Was there anything else I could have done?" he muttered.
He'd been talking to himself, but of course, outside of the station's private areas, none of them were ever truly alone.
"It's unlikely that any of your other options during that encounter would have preserved your family's safety," said Andromeda.
"You can't know that," he said. But even as he spoke the words, he couldn't help but wonder if perhaps she had a better sense of the odds than any human ever could.
"When your mother was first captured by those two men, I had a response in character with what a human might call distress," said Andromeda. "I ran through my background processes at accelerated speed. In a sense, I lived those moments of her in peril in slow motion, using all of my resources in an attempt to divine a solution to save her."
"You might have been able to find one had she not limited your cameras to following just her," he said.
"It's possible. I was surprised by how capable you proved to be under stress, Jovian. You acted well even if you feel some amount of guilt over taking human lives."
"It's not guilt," he said. "I mean, it's not just guilt. What if this is just the start? I was capable of doing it so easily, without even hesitating..."
"You were protecting your family," said Andromeda. "It was highly improbable for all of you to survive that encounter. I believe you found the best option in a range of bad options."
He switched to the bench press, setting weights that looked about right on both sides without stopping to read the numbers. "I could have aimed differently, left them alive somehow."
"I don't believe that would have been possible without you or another member of your family suffering injury," said Andromeda.
He pumped out one rep after another, breathing hard. "I could have… done… something!"
One of the weights slid off unexpectedly, not having been attached properly. The bar jerked sideways. Jove tossed it to the ground and punched the air, swearing and muttering nonsense.
"You should rest, Jovian," said Andromeda. "In time, you may come to see your actions differently. Many humans would seek to dull their empathy rather than experience it as vividly as you seek to."
"I don't want to experience anything!" he snapped. "I just want… things to be normal again."
Normal. He wasn't even sure what the word meant anymore.